DURING the course of my artillery practice, which I never intermitted
through the whole month passed by us beleaguered in the castle, I met
with a great many very striking accidents, all of them worthy to be
related. But since I do not care to be too prolix, or to exhibit myself
outside the sphere of my profession, I will omit the larger part of
them, only touching upon those I cannot well neglect, which shall be the
fewest in number and the most remarkable. The first which comes to hand
is this: Messer Antonio Santacroce had made me come down from the Angel,
in order to fire on some houses in the neighbourhood, where certain of
our besiegers had been seen to enter. While I was firing, a cannon shot
reached me, which hit the angle of a battlement, and carried off enough
of it to be the cause why I sustained no injury. The whole mass struck
me in the chest and took my breath away. I lay stretched upon the ground
like a dead man, and could hear what the bystanders were saying. Among
them all, Messer Antonio Santacroce lamented greatly, exclaiming: “Alas,
alas! we have lost the best defender that we had.” Attracted by the
uproar, one of my comrades ran up; he was called Gianfrancesco, and was
a bandsman, but was far more naturally given to medicine than to music.
On the spot he flew off, crying for a stoop of the very best Greek wine.
Then he made a tile red-hot, and cast upon it a good handful of
wormwood; after which he sprinkled the Greek wine; and when the wormwood
was well soaked, he laid it on my breast, just where the bruise was
visible to all. Such was the virtue of the wormwood that I immediately
regained my scattered faculties. I wanted to begin to speak; but could
not; for some stupid soldiers had filled my mouth with earth, imagining
that by so doing they were giving me the sacrament; and indeed they were
more like to have excommunicated me, since I could with difficulty come
to myself again, the earth doing me more mischief than the blow.
However, I escaped that danger, and returned to the rage and fury of the
guns, pursuing my work there with all the ability and eagerness that I
could summon.
Pope Clement, by this, had sent to demand assistance from the Duke of
Urbino, who was with the troops of Venice; he commissioned the envoy to
tell his Excellency that the Castle of S. Angelo would send up every
evening three beacons from its summit accompanied by three discharges of
the cannon thrice repeated, and that so long as this signal was
continued, he might take for granted that the castle had not yielded. I
was charged with lighting the beacons and firing the guns for this
purpose; and all this while I pointed my artillery by day upon the
places where mischief could be done. The Pope, in consequence, began to
regard me with still greater favour, because he saw that I discharged my
functions as intelligently as the task demanded. Aid from the Duke of
Urbino [1] never came; on which, as it is not my business, I will make
no further comment.
Note 1. Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, commanded a
considerable army as general of the Church, and was now acting for
Venice. Why he effected no diversion while the Imperial troops were
marching upon Rome, and why he delayed to relieve the city, was never
properly explained. Folk attributed his impotent conduct partly to a
natural sluggishness in warfare, and partly to his hatred for the house
of Medici. Leo X had deprived him of his dukedom, and given it to a
Medicean prince. It is to this that Cellini probably refers in the
cautious phrase which ends the chapter.